


This Can’t Be Good for Your Health, You Know.

by thatsrightdollface



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, simulations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: “C’mon, Mr. Detective.  Stay with me,” Shuichi Saihara’s boyfriend said, snapping his fingers right by Shuichi’s face.  It was a crisp, knowing gesture, that snap, and it came along with the comedy movie on the TV in front of them getting progressively louder.  Kokichi cranking up the volume.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 155





	This Can’t Be Good for Your Health, You Know.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there~~~ I hope you enjoy this fic, if you read it!!! I'm sorry for anything and everything I might've gotten weird. :)
> 
> Please take care of yourself, and I hope you're having a good day. Thank you!!!

“C’mon, Mr. Detective. Stay with me,” Shuichi Saihara’s boyfriend said, snapping his fingers right by Shuichi’s face. It was a crisp, knowing gesture, that snap, and it came along with the comedy movie on the TV in front of them getting progressively louder. Kokichi cranking up the volume. 

The former Ultimate Supreme Leader was wearing a glow-in-the-dark ring Shuichi’d won for him at a carnival over the summer; until just a second ago, he had been leaning against Shuichi’s shoulder, sock feet resting propped on the coffee table. Kokichi was wearing Danganronpa franchise socks, as much as Shuichi wanted to send back the crates and crates of unsold merchandise they’d inherited when he shut down the killing game show for good... Apparently, Kokichi thought it was funny to have cutesy little Ultimate Detective cartoons on his clothes sometimes, as ridiculous and horrible as being forced to participate in the killing game had been for all of them. Kokichi had nearly fallen asleep in front of the movie, actually, before he noticed what Shuichi was looking at on his phone. They’d seen this film at least a dozen times, it felt like. It was one of Kokichi’s favorites, and something he put on when he didn’t want to think about anything at all. 

“I’m still watching the movie,” Shuichi said, but they both knew it wasn’t true. He could probably recite whole scenes from this film without having to think about it too hard. If he really wanted to make Kokichi laugh, he’d do shoddy imitations of the voices and everything. Shuichi had been furrowing his eyebrows so darkly, just now, and his head was starting to ache, and Kokichi must have noticed him getting tenser... getting farther away... even through the haze of sleep. 

“Liar,” Kokichi laughed, flippy purple hair ruffled and falling in his face, voice still a little sleep-heavy around the edges. He waggled his fingers in front of Shuichi’s phone screen. “You’re trying to defend my precious honor on that message board again. Can’t hide from the terrifying Supreme Leader.”

Shuichi clicked his phone off, right in the middle of typing a sentence about how Kokichi had _tried_ to get everyone to share their motive videos near the start of the killing game, hoping to get everybody on the same page. Hoping to establish where he stood vis a vis wanting to rescue his non-murdery prankster clown gang from a torture prison, so maybe he’d be a little easier to understand and trust... showing people who he was, even if his words were so often just blatant, shameless lies... and hoping they’d show him who they were, too, so everybody could trust each other. Kokichi had tried leading the group through kinder, more open methods, but when that didn’t work... well, yeah, when that didn’t work, Kokichi had reached for his darker ways, guiding from the lonelier side of everybody’s trust. 

The people Shuichi was arguing with on that particular message board would probably counter by bringing up how Kokichi had kidnapped/tricked the rest of the fifty-third killing game class before trying to get everybody to exchange motive videos... they would probably ask Shuichi how he could be so sure Kokichi wasn’t just trying to whittle everybody’s guard down, so he could manipulate the situation more effectively. And how _did_ Shuichi know? 

Well, because he’d asked Kokichi exactly what he’d been thinking, drinking coffee one morning... Shuichi’s black, and Kokichi’s with enough chocolate hazelnut creamer in it to practically count as Nutella... and Kokichi’d told him, “I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you about my motives, so I wanted to show you. If we were gonna work as a team, we had to start with a foundation of trust.” He hadn’t smiled, and he’d held Shuichi’s eyes. 

People seemed to think being the Ultimate Supreme Leader meant Kokichi was good at lording himself over other people, but Shuichi was sure he knew better than all that, by now. Up just a little ways, scrolling back on that message board, there was a link to a video Shuichi had only seen once, but that he knew plenty of the people he interacted with daily had watched over and over again. There was still footage floating around of Kokichi’s death, in the killing game, when he’d offered himself up in one final gamble, one last-ditch effort to trick the game masters once and for all. To break the system.

Shuichi and Kokichi had watched that death scene together, once the simulation ended, once they came to understand each other better. Once Shuichi realized how relieved he could be, seeing Kokichi’s face whole and baffled again, after knowing he had just recently been smashed to a pulp by a hydraulic press. “Oh, you guys made it to the afterlife, too?” Kokichi had said, voice woozy, swaying on his bare feet. “Well, that sucks.” He had dragged himself out of the pod he’d been strapped into, even though Shuichi would’ve been more than willing to give him a hand. Shuichi would’ve wanted to apologize for outright refusing to team up with Kokichi, too, or even try to understand him; Shuichi would’ve wanted to thank him, for trusting that even an Ultimate Detective like he’d turned out to be could understand that final gamble and work to help them win. 

Kokichi had ended up collapsing against Kaito Momota seconds later — they were all still coming back to themselves, bit by bit — and Kaito’d steadied him. Maybe he still remembered what it’d felt like when Kokichi held that antidote up to his mouth, propping him up with a skinny arm that shouldn’t have been as strong as it was. Maybe... now that they learned they’d made it through to the other side, tortured and changed, artificially-constructed personalities wearing skins that had been sold to the Danganronpa Company without looking back... they knew it was a good time for second chances. 

Shuichi thought about the burning hurt in Kokichi’s eyes just before he died more often than he wanted to say. The pain had been real, even if Kokichi himself had lived through it to sit next to Shuichi and squeeze his hand watching that death-footage together. The rage and wild trust — hoping his friends would make his death truly mean something — had been real, and Kokichi had seemed so fragile, so easily ended, lying poisoned and breathing messily as the hydraulic press readied itself to fall. He had been human, and he had been afraid. He’d done his best not to wear that fear on his face. 

“Hey. Hey, yeah, you. If you’re just gonna turn your phone back on again when I close my eyes, that’s no fair. Why don’t you play your puzzle game you like so much? Or read that sci-fi self-insert novel you told Kaito you’d edit for him?” Kokichi rubbed Shuichi’s shoulder, brushing a kiss against the edge of his forehead, just by his hairline. Kokichi still smelled like the pizza he’d thrown in the oven, earlier. Like a warm day; like some time they’d both had off, where they could forget that the world outside would never really be able to look at them as anything other than the final killing semester class. “I promise — I don’t care what those random people think about me. _You_ like me, right?” 

Shuichi sighed. Smoothed down some of Kokichi’s hair. “I love you,” he said. “I just want people to stop watching you die.”

Kokichi blinked. Maybe that one had taken him a little bit by surprise. “I... want people to stop watching me die, too,” he said. “And the first thing. You know, even back in the game, I meant it when I said I think about you all the time?”

“I know,” Shuichi said. 

“I really wasn’t lying.”

“I believe you!” Shuichi chuckled, opening his phone back up and showing Kokichi the line he’d been typing. “I’m just going to finish this sentence, and then I’ll stop.”

Kokichi squinted at the neon pink blood-bright text on Shuichi’s phone. A Danganronpa Company fan page. “Aw... do people really think I wanted you to gang up with me so I could kill you? And I might just be happy I got away with it, now? That’s so mean.” A pause. “Okay, Mr. Detective. Just one more sentence to set ‘em straight, but then, I dunno. I’m sure if you tried to get everyone in the world to like me, your heart’d give out faster than mine with the stress. And _I_ live mostly on Panta.”

It was true: Kokichi _did_ live mostly on grape soda. Shuichi had started slipping water bottles in his bag before he left for his part-time job, but still. Kokichi had been so relieved, getting hired at that game store, even though everybody there knew he was using an alias and there was no way in the world he just Didn’t Know What Danganronpa Was; Kokichi settled back against Shuichi’s arm again, now, and closed his eyes. 

Shuichi finished up typing that one sentence and then... though he had plenty more to say... opened up his puzzle game to pick up where he’d left off. 


End file.
